Reddit Stories - Bound by MATRIMONY_ FORCED to Call My MOTHER's Fiancé 'Father' at 35_

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #relationships #family #marriage #mother #fatherSummary:In this gripping Reddit story, a woman is forced to call her mother's fiancé "father" at the age of 35. The complex dynamics of family relationships and marriage unfold as she navigates this emotional turmoil.Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, relationships, family, marriage, mother, father, forced relationships, stepfather, family dynamics, emotional turmoil, Reddit community, personal story, family secrets, unconventional relationships, family bonds, emotional challengesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. The new husband-to-be of my mother insisted that I address him as father even though I am 35 years old. Upon my rejection, he began weeping over his responsibilities as a parent and fled to his parents' residence. I'm a 35-year-old man and for some backstory my dad died when I was 19, leaving my mom with me and my two siblings, I'm the oldest. It took some time but eventually my mom started dating again. We don't live together per se but our houses back onto each other and have a gate so it's pretty common for her to offer to do my laundry or me just go over for dinner or go look after our dog, that kind of stuff. Plus me and my siblings go over there for dinner every other Friday night or so. A bit after she started, the men she's been dating have been getting younger and younger and I've never had a problem with them.

She's been very open to me and my siblings that she wants to get married again and we've always been supportive. At least after the initial shocks, LOL. The latest guy is by far the most serious and they've been dating since around last June. He proposed at the start of autumn and they want to get married next summer. Again, me and my siblings are fine with this because it's her life and we trust him. He's a nice guy and they clearly love each other. But anyway, so long and short is, this weekend, her fiancé, let's call him Phil, calls me and asks me if I could over. I say yes, sure, I'll be over after work and I assumed he just needed help with

some DIY stuff they're doing. When I get over there he calls me sport and says we need to talk. I should mention this is something he does to me and my little brother, calling us thing sport, Scout, little buddy, or my personal favorite, calling us red and blue seemingly out of nowhere. My brother is 30 by the way. He tried it with my little sister, 28, two once and called her princess once but he stopped when she just stared at him. So thing with Phil is that he reminds me a lot of Charlie Day's character and horrible bosses and that his sole ambition has always been to meet a girl, get married, and have a family. When he told me and my brother this, my brother made some joke about how maybe our mom's going to come short on the last part and he got very upset,

but they made up after. Anyway, so I go round and I ask if my mom's around and he says no, it's just him and that we really need to talk man to man. I say sure and he starts talking about how he's always wanted to be a father, etc., and raise a son to call his own, and then he drops this bombshell by saying, Now I know I can never replace your father, the man who made you, but it would mean the world to me if you could call me dad. I'll admit it, I sniggered a little. And then I knew he was serious because he looked like he was about to cry.

And he didn't drop it either. I asked if he really meant it and he got really emotional. and started talking about what it means to be a man and how his purpose is to have and provide for a family and he wants me and my siblings to be part of that family. Like he reiterated he'll never replace my father, and this did rub me the wrong way a bit, but he's ready to step up and be my dad and provide for and protect me and my siblings. And I'm just sat there thinking, dude, I'm a decade older than you and live in a separate house. I don't need providing for and even if I did, I don't think a guy a third of my age who works part-to-year-old. time at the hardware store and is into collecting manga is the man to do it. No offense if you are into that LOL, just, I don't know, I was a bit taken aback. I was in shock so just said okay and he

gets emotional again but in a happy way talking about how he wants to go camping or go to a baseball game. I don't even like baseball LMAO. And how he joined the Lions this year and how he wants to bring me into it too is his boy which just feels so surreal. Even more. so as I'm a Shriner so all this talk of service and charity isn't the brag because again I'm ten years older than this guy. Well I ended it by just saying, this has gotten a bit too weird and I was going home. He got very upset and I left, called my brother and he agreed it sounds weird as fuck. Later my mom called me and she, wasn't disappointed but admitted it's made him very upset and depressed. I told her that if he's embarrassed, he doesn't need to be, I get he's excited

about the marriage and we can just laugh this off as a funny story. She then said that wasn't what he was upset about, he, and she too a bit, is upset about the fact he poured his heart out and I rejected him. She said, yeah, it is a bit kooky, but this is how he proves to himself he's a man and I guess I was a bit angry and said something like, first off it's not my job to certify what's between his legs and second this doesn't prove he's a man, it just proves he's a nut job. I apologized immediately, but she said she didn't want him. hear it and hung up. She called back 10 minutes later and we apologized and she begged me to

just go along with it until he has some kids to call his own. I won't go too much into the details here but she sort of let slip they planned to try IVF treatment because she's not ready to give up on being a mom just yet. And while I have my own thoughts about whether or not that's a good idea, I'm not here to litigate on that. We finished up fine and I reiterated I'd support her and she agreed that it was definitely a stressful situation for me but begged me to at least think about it. Which leads me to hear. I did think it over and obviously I'm going to say no. I had a dad and he died, rest in peace dad, and that's the only dad I've ever needed,

I've ever wanted and I'll ever bestow that title on. I'm not asking if someone's unreasonable or what I should do, more so what I should say. This clearly means a lot to him for some reason and I deeply love my mom so much. want to try and minimize the damage, especially as we're still so involved in each other's lives and they live behind me. How can I make it clear to them, as painlessly as possible that I think this is weird and borderline offensive? I really don't want to rip the Band-Aid off because I fear what it might do to the family. Edit, showed my brother the post and he laughed so hard he started coughing LOL then said we should call him Dr. Phil and each other blue and red, so swapped the nicknames

he gave us around, thoughts? Edit 2, as people were asking, he has no access to my mom's money or anything like that. She rents the house and it came pre-furnished and otherwise has no real assets. She doesn't make a lot of money anyway so there's no pecuniary motive we could think of. Update, November 16, 2024. Anyway, so I told both my siblings and we agreed we collectively put our foot down with Phil family dinner next week. especially after an incident where Phil referred to my brother as sport and asked if he wanted to go see a baseball game with him. Admittedly, I was a bit spurred on by what you all said and got involved,

pinging him back with on no tickets for me Daddy and my brother responded with Daddy wants to me all to himself M. Hot and Phil took a few minutes to respond before saying he was shocked, speechless and disgusted. He then messaged me in private to say he was utterly appalled and that he'd never disrespect his own father the way you boys did. I kind of lost it at this point and said right, that's because you're not my father, Phil, you're a 24-year-old man-child dating my mother. You have no right to my respect, especially not to the respect a father gets. I immediately said sorry but then blocked his number and left the group chat. Apparently he sent a similar thing to my brother who responded with more daddy stuff and Phil blocked him. Well, uh, that aside, I don't think that family dinner is going

ahead. After the original post blew up it seemed someone from his Lions Club found it and reported to their chair or whatever and Phil has either been expelled or resigned or in the process of one of the two. He has removed nearly all mentions of the Lions from his social media and no longer mentions being a member with his last post on it being some cryptic goodbye post where he kind of drones on about what it means to be a man in the modern day and the duty of fatherhood bestowed on all men at birth. Really weird shit. My mom called me half in a panic, half in a rage after, about the stuff I'd been telling about him before breaking down and saying we need to meet, which we did and got my brother to go over too. I know he has temporarily moved back in with his parents in the next town over

but from my understanding they still want to go ahead with the wedding. But I think that's more so because they've already spent money on it. When she said she was determined to have more kids, plural, did step up and asked if she really thought that was a good idea at her age, and I pointed out that assuming she had the baby next year, and she lived to 80, they still wouldn't have finished college. She just stammered on about how people live longer these days before breaking down crying and admitting she's not ready to give up on mothering due to some deep-seated trauma and fears about the family breaking apart that I won't go into for her sake. When we reassured her that we weren't going anywhere she calmed down and we had a very good

honest conversation where she's agreed to drop the IVF stuff on the grounds that it'd be too expensive and unlikely to get greenlit. But she's still adamant it's scientifically possible and she should be allowed to do it from an ethical standpoint because she has to win that argument, slash, and has agreed to look into fostering instead. Me and my brother highly doubt anything will ever come of that so we're not that worried anymore. The very good news is she's also agreed to look into therapy slash psychiatric help to deal with her trauma and we've helped get her in touch with a nice lady in town to unpack all this in a more healthy way. So at least one person is getting the help they need. I have no idea what's happened with Phil or what's going to happen

with him but I did make it clear to my mom that he is not my dad, he's not even my stepdad, I'm not a kid. And he's never going to be either one outside of legal fuckery. She relented pretty quickly, I think she's finally broken out of her shell at least, and we've agreed that if things go ahead that's going to be a huge red line though I don't know if he'll want to be friends with me after all this LMAO. Anyway, thanks for the help on the original post y'all. Edit, bit of an update as I can't respond to everybody but I think the marriage is off. Phil has gone AWOL again and has had a huge argument with his family as they've demanded he call

off the wedding and date people his own age. This apparently made him snap. Me and my mom have met his mom an older brother who said Phil is very insecure around girls his own age and has never been able to talk them hence his preference. This very deeply upset my mom and after some begging from all of us. She has agreed to push the wedding back though she wants to keep dating him. I have no idea where Phil is, though his brother assumes he's couch surfing with his D&D friends who have been sending me and my brother some not nice messages. because clearly we're just jealous of the milf hunter. If any of you socially inept fucks are reading this,

I don't need to chase middle-aged folk because I can talk to boys my own age like a normal person. Peace. Next story, girlfriend told everyone she was excited about our planned baby. But then I found toxic herbs in our drawer and learned she caused a miscarriage for social media attention. I, 28M, have been dating my girlfriend, 26F, 44 years. years. She has told me she always wanted children. We just didn't actively try for one though. I never pressured her into having a baby, it was more so her idea. I make enough and we own a home

so having a baby is something we can do. So, to clarify, I'm not mad at her for this. I'm extremely concerned and I feel like everything she has said about her wanting a baby was a lie. Abortion is also legal up to 21 weeks of pregnancy in our state. So she told me she was pregnant, she was having symptoms and took a test. She was happy about it and excited. I was happy as well and offered to make an appointment for her. We both went together and she was six weeks pregnant. We have been planning, she even told her friends and family. She ended up having a miscarriage at around nine weeks. It was sudden and she was upset and I comforted her about it. It seemed very tough for her, so I did my best to try and make her feel better.

I had to retrieve something from a drawer in our bedroom and I found some herbs covered under a bag. It was Paineroyle and Mugwort. I was confused because I have heard of Painer Royal being used to cause self-abortions. I asked her about it and she immediately became defensive and told me that she didn't know where it came from. I kept trying to ask her about it and she ended up telling me she used it to have a miscarriage. She was crying and I was just in shock. I asked her why. I told her she didn't have to lie to me about it and I'm confused because she was the one who really wanted a baby.

She didn't give me an answer about it. I told her that we need to go to the hospital to make sure she isn't hurt since paineroyal is toxic but she kept declining. It's been a few days and she seems fine. I've been trying to ask her about this, but she just says she doesn't want to talk about it. Apparently, she was telling her friends and family she had a miscarriage and has been accepting condolences. She's avoiding this, but I don't want to push it towards her anymore. I'm not too sure what to do about this because I'm worried she might be having some type of mental breakdown or something. I eventually told her that she should not tell me about having a baby again, and I can't trust her about it anymore.

She was upset hearing that, but what else could I say about something like this? This might make me a huge asshole, but in the back of my mind has been thinking she might have did this for attention from her friends and family. I'd quote to do and I feel like a horrible person for even thinking this stuff. Edit, I'm thankful for all the info on the herbs and all of the advice. I can't comment for a few hours because I'm going to not be on Reddit but I'm going to talk to her tonight, and tomorrow or whenever it. everything is calmed down I will make an update.

Update 1, December 2nd, 2024. Firstly, for some context, we have a planned parenthood that specializes in abortions like five minutes away. I understand people thinking she didn't want to get an abortion because of protesters. I completely understand. I drive by that specific place every single day for work. I have seen no protesters. It's usually empty besides.

a few cars on the side of the side of the road. But, I still understand why she wouldn't want a medical abortion from reading the comments. I asked her why, what was her goal here? She was trying really hard to avoid the conversation and left the room, but, I apologize if this makes me an asshole. But I told her if we can't have a conversation about this, I have to end the relationship. She came back in and said the reason why she did this was because she never felt like her family gave her enough attention in life, and didn't feel supported by them so she wanted to tell them she had a miscarriage so they can feel bad for her. I was confused because she could have just gotten a medical abortion and lied about it instead

of just harming her body with a toxic herb. I asked her about that, and she told me she wanted to have the experience of having an actual miscarriage. I was so confused and in shock so I didn't say much else because all of this just sounded crazy to me. She told me she didn't. She told me she didn't want me mad at her and she doesn't want to break up and she was literally begging me to not break up with her. I asked her, is there any chance the baby wouldn't have been mine? She said no. I told her she needs to get therapy ASAP. I thankfully make enough to afford therapy and I told her I will pay for her if she just please go to therapy. She agreed. I also told her she needs to go to the hospital and I was telling her all of your comments about

the septic that can happen in liver and kidney damage and that kind of scared her into going to the hospital to get checked out. We went to the hospital last night and thankfully she is okay. Apparently she drank around one cup of it a day for a few days. I found out she was also taking some other things, high dose of vitamin C, turmeric, parsley. That's pretty much it for now, but I'm not too sure where to go from here. I love her and I do want to be with her but all of this is so out of the blue. Thanks for all of the comments on the last post. If anything else happens, I'll make another update.

Comment where Op has replied. Commenter one, she sounds like she has some serious mental health issues like others have said. If you choose to stay then I would be cautious moving forward having kids with her. She's willing to cause herself self-harm for the sake of attention. There is no telling what she would do if you guys have already had the child. I've seen mothers fake their child's illness for attention before. She comes off as deeply troubled and manipulative. I don't think she wants to hurt anyone out of malice, but it's still very concerning.

If you stay, therapy is a must. Hoop, thank you. Yeah, the idea of having a baby is well off the table now. I'm not too sure where I'm going to go with this, but I'm heavily thinking about leaving the relationship after reading the comments. I'm just worried about her possibly harming herself if I do break up with her update 2. December 4th, 2024. A lot has happened from my last post and now everything is calmer now. I'm hoping this will be my last update.

Apologies since this is going to be long. In my last post I told her she needed to go to therapy ASAP. Told her I will pay and everything. I just hoped for the love of fucking God to just for her. her to please go to therapy. That was the only thing I wanted. I haven't set up anything yet, because she told me she doesn't want to go to therapy now. She told me she will never do what she did again and doesn't believe she needs therapy. I was going back and forth with her on this, but she was very insistent on not wanting any therapy. I told her I can't move on in this

relationship if she doesn't do therapy. She was arguing with me about it and told me if I loved her, I will stay in this relationship regardless and it wasn't even that big of a deal. I was pretty pissed hearing that because not only did she purposely miscarried the baby we planned for, she harmed herself for no reason, in her words, to experience an actual miscarriage, and I can't even trust her anymore. I was thinking about telling her parents at this point and I accidentally brought it up out of worry of her mental health slash me being pissed off and she begged me, got on the ground begged me to not tell her parents. I took her word, because I didn't want her to lose her mind even more over this.

I told her I absolutely have to leave this relationship. I told her it isn't my responsibility anymore because this has honestly been making me lose my mind too. I was holding it back but I can't really take it anymore. Also yesterday, before this fight, she publicly stated on Facebook that she had a miscarriage and was tore up about it. Accepting condolences again in the comments. I brought that up to her, and she told me the same thing in my last post, she was pretty much just wanting to feel important to friends slash family.

She was so nonchalant about it and honestly seemed like she thought I'd think I wouldn't care. I told her to stop posting about it and to stop telling people. Back to when we were having the fight, I told her seriously I can't be with her anymore. I will allow you to stay here or you can go back to your parents. She was laying on the ground crying at this point. I had my phone ready because my gut feeling was telling me that she might do something to herself. She would come out of the room she was packing in and come close to me and hug me out of nowhere. She said that if I'm breaking up with her she wants a last final hug.

The wildest thing is she came out of the room with one of my shirts on, a shirt she was not wearing before, take it off right in front of me, and tells me here's your shirt back. I don't know what she was trying to do. She finally end up leaving and went to her parents. Right before she left she was crying and I think it started to hit her that I was actually being serious. She was messaging me and calling me constantly, ranging from her just fixing this together, saying she wants therapy now, and her saying she will never do what she did again. I've been ignoring all of it. I realize this is not my responsibility now, and her parents can take care of it.

Like what my worry has been, apparently, she did try to harm herself. Her mom messaged me about it. She said that her daughter is at the hospital and I'm assuming now on a hold because she tried to kill herself. She is physically fine. That is the last of it, and I'm thinking this will be my last update. I am not going back to her, and I'm going to try and stop thinking about all of this. And get a good lock for my door. Thanks for all of the advice on the last post.

Edit 1 I am telling her parents now. If anything happens I will just update it here edit 2, I ended up telling her parents. I had messages relating to this between me and her, took photos of the herbs she used, told them everything. Thankfully, they didn't accuse me or do anything drastic and thank me for telling them. They said they will tell the hospital what I told them. Not too sure what's going on at the moment or what's going to happen after since she is being held right now. I will update this if anything else happens.